Tea party bashes Romney, vows comeback

The tea party was in finger-pointing mode Wednesday, and the digits weren’t aimed at President Barack Obama.

Tea partiers placed the blame of the “epic election failure of 2012″ squarely on Mitt Romney and the Republican establishment during a press conference at the National Press Club.

“What we got was a weak, moderate candidate hand-picked by the Beltway elites and country club establishment wing of the Republican Party,” Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin said. ”The presidential loss is unequivocally on them.”

Romney’s flaws? The list went on and on. Martin said that if candidates don’t start playing the game Constitution-style, it won’t be pretty for the GOP.

Martin and representatives from the Susan B. Anthony List, Americans for Tax Reform and The Paul Revere Project, among others, warned future Republican presidential and congressional hopefuls will be doomed if they don’t stick to traditional conservative values and small-government ideals.

Even if the former Massachusetts governor was conservative enough for tea partiers, his Etch-a-Sketch moves to appease both the religious right in the primary and independents in the general election ultimately cost him the presidency, speakers said.

But congressional candidates backed by the party didn’t enjoy the wave of success that gave the movement momentum in 2010.

Newly elected Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was the tea party poster child. He emerged victorious from the primary and glided to an easy win Tuesday.

Iowa Rep. Steve King also was reelected for his sixth term, but there’s where the good news ended.

Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock both lost Senate seats they had been favored to win before their comments on rape garnered national criticism. Reps. Joe Walsh, R-Ill.; Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md.; and Francisco “Quico” Canseco, R-Texas, all lost their House seats. So did Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., who was trying to step up to the Senate. Allen West, R-Fla., is trailing in his House district but refuses to concede and called for a recount.

“The tea party’s flag drooped pretty severely in Senate contests around the country — everywhere except Texas,” Rice University political scientist Paul Brace said. “The question is whether Cruz still finds it useful to carry the tea party banner as he moves forward.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List — a political action committee dedicated to electing pro-life women to Congress — vowed to spend more time coaching candidates on sensitivity and message before giving them official endorsement. They’re not changing their views to appeal to minorities, but they do plan to listen more to what is important to groups like Latinos and African Americans to find common ground on social issues, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell said.

And they insist, despite the rough start, that someday the tea party will be the savior of the GOP.

“The battle to take over the Republican Party begins today,” ConservativeHQ.com chairman Richard Viguerie said. “Mitt Romney’s loss was the death rattle of the establishment of the Republican Party.”